The Cooper House
by CaptainHammerIsMyPenis
Summary: Sam and Dean return to Boulder, Colorado on a shaky tip from a mental hospital patient. They expect it to be another dead-end, normal where they thought there was paranormal, but instead find a death toll going back hundreds of years. Will the brothers be able to figure out what is causing these deaths and freak accidents before anyone else is added to the victims list?


A/N: Hello readers! Just a friendly note here: This story takes place in season 8, just after the Citizen Fang episode. There are a few non-canon characters and events referenced (Crazy Gary and "the New Hampshire thing" are made up) but overall I did my best to make it canon. This is my first legit fictional character fanfic, so let me know how I did please!

The Cooper House

Chapter One

The room smelled strongly of mould and stale alcohol. Not that the room was unhygienic per se, but like the janitors did not carpet-clean as thoroughly as one could have hoped. The sheets were without any crusty spots however, a small reprieve from the last few rat holes the brothers had inhabited of late.

Trailing from state to state, from cities to towns so small you could hardly find them on the map. After several weeks of looking for a job they found themselves driving through Boulder, Colorado.

"Look Dean," Sam said, his frustrated tone very clear in his voice as he reiterated the same gripe he'd been complaining about for the past half hour, "We've been in Boulder before. You know it's a terrible idea for Hunters to visit the same town twice, so why are we here?" He threw his duffel on the bed and extracted his laptop, opening it to find it frozen on Busty Asian Beauties _again_. This had happened so often over the past few weeks that he didn't even bother bitching about it, and instead waited for Dean to answer, while he reset the laptop.

Dean tossed his own bag on the opposing bed, and then dug out the sixer of beer he'd bought on the way over. "Look dude, I told you. I got a tip from Gary—"

"Wait, Crazy Gary? The batcrap institutionalized crazy guy from New Hampshire on our last job?" Sam tapped a few keys and hacked into the wifi, "How do you know this job is legit, anyway?"

"Well," Dean tossed Sam a sealed beer, which he caught without having to turn from his computer, "He didn't give me any specifics, just sayin' something about strange deaths at a house called The Cooper House, somewhere around here. Strange deaths, and he says no one's lived there in years."

Sam cracked his beer and took a long drink, "Fine, whatever. I'll see what I can dig up." He turned back to his computer and began what looked to be a long night with Google; he looked up in time to see Dean heading for the door, a second beer in his hand, knuckles curled around the two glass necks. "Going somewhere?" Sam raised his eyebrows, and for half a second he swore Dean looked a little flustered.

"Uh… Just out." He slipped out the door, it closing sharply behind him. Sam distinctly heard Dean yell, "_Fuck_!" though the cheap wood and snorted, his key left on his bed next to the duffel.

Sam half expected Dean to knock on the door and ask for his key but instead heard the low murmur of his voice on his brand new cell, though through the door he could not tell what he was saying.

With a short huff he turned back to his laptop, and began to Google, though he was uncertain of what he was looking for. Ghost? Wraith? Wyrd? He had no idea.

By the early morning (and several hugely overpriced lattes later) he found himself with half a dozen tabs open on his browser, while he jumped from tab to tab, taking notes from what he found, given that his portable printer mysteriously disappeared one night after he went to bed.

When he finished jotting down notes, he looked up and glanced around the empty motel room. "Well, looks like we have a job here." He said to the walls, decorated with cheesy 70's wallpaper and off-colour family portraits.

"Hey Sammy! You say something about a job?!"

Sam jumped about ten feet in the air, bumping his knees against the underside of the little table he had been sitting at, and nearly losing his laptop in the process. He spun around to see Dean grinning widely; his arms spread open and sullen Castiel standing behind him, his hand on Dean's shoulder.

"Goddammit Cas," Sam grunted as he stood up, proceeding to toss the multitude of paper coffee cups that had accumulated over the course of the night, while he struggled to ignore Dean, who was way too happy for four AM. "Don't sneak up on my like that, could you at least whistle or stomp your feet or something?"

"I'm sorry," Castiel replied in his usual monotone, "Dean said it would be "funny"." He used his fingers to signal air quotes, "I do not see the humour however." He let his arms fall to his sides. His nondescript expression remaining the same while dean moved forward and clapped Sam hard on the shoulder.

"Find anything? Was Crazy Gary not as crazy as we thought?"

"Apparently not." Sam sat back down at his laptop, while Dean fell into a sitting position on his bed, hard enough that it creaked audibly. He froze for a moment, limbs splayed out in all directions and his eyes wide, but after a second he relaxed and sat up properly. He offered a short nod in response to Sam's blank, marginally annoyed look, while Castiel stood silently next to the bed.

"Anyway," Sam began, clicking on a few tabs while checking his notes "I did some research, and from what I can tell there's been deaths going back about two hundred years, but I checked up with Garth and he says it's been going on longer than that, but it hasn't been recorded. There's also been a lot of weird accidents around that area, people being burned with boiling water in their bath tubs, spontaneous combustion, that kind of thing. Thing is—it's not consistent. So I don't think we're dealing with a spirit."

"Yeah, spirits love consistency," Dean replied with a short nod. "Any theories?"

"A few." Sam clicked open another window, "It might be a Basajuan, a forest spirit that can get nasty if you come across it. Only downside is it's basically an Ogre, so it won't be easy to kill."

"A good beheading might do the trick," Dean commented while he unzipped his duffel and fished out his machete. He pulled it from its leather sheath and fingered the sharp edge, looking back up to Sam while he lifted his bare fingers from the blade's edge. "Anything else?"

Sam eyed Dean curiously, taking note of a distinctive red-purple mark on his neck. Hookers again? Even Purgatory couldn't change him. "That's all I have, I had to do a lot of cross-referencing, because even though most of the deaths and weird accidents happened at this _Cooper House _some of them also happened to a few of the surrounding houses."

"Maybe this Basajuan has a wide territory he's protecting? That's all I got Sammy." He stood and stretched, his shoulders, back, and elbows popping in almost perfect sync. As he did so, the rolled up sleeves of his shirt rode up on one side, exposing the edge of a very large bruise. Sam furrowed his brow, but said nothing. "We better get some shuteye and we'll tackle the Cooper House tonight. I did a quick sweep last night and it looks like it's been abandoned for years." Dean grinned a little, "It's even got one of those Historical Site plaques outside of it. Awesome." He stripped off his collared button-up and shoved his bag off the bed, falling into the place that once held it in his jeans a T-shirt.

Sam stood and stretched, feeling the exhaustion after too many cups of coffee begin to set in. Castiel was still staring intently at Dean, but either his brother didn't notice or had finally mastered the art of ignoring him. For Sam however, it was still unnerving. "Uh, Cas?" Castiel whipped his head around to face Sam, squinting a little at the taller Winchester. Sam couldn't figure out if Castiel never actually liked him or if he was trying to look tough—maybe both. "I was just wondering if you want in on the job or not." Sam felt his insides twist with apprehension, remembering when Castiel had decided to be a hunter last time.

"I will help if I can," Castiel replied, his tone still unchanging, while his gaze shifted back to Dean, who was already asleep. "I do not sleep, as you know. I will find out what I can." Without another word he disappeared. Sam stared blankly at the empty space he had previously inhabited for a few moments before stepping over to the laptop and locking the screen with a password, and then he too headed to bed.

The weak mattress sunk under his weight, and it took several minutes for his body to relax, his mind flitting between his brother—so different and yet so familiar since returning from the veritable hell that Purgatory seemed to be, his close relationship with Cas and the questionable vampire—what was his deal? He was just glad that Dean had chosen to _not_ involve Benny in on this job.

With his mind on warp speed, jumping from subject to subject, it took Sam nearly an hour before he fell asleep, just as the world around them began to wake.


End file.
